Its simple Ags, it has become abundantly clear that the presence of american troops in the middle east, and afghanistan has become a recruiting point for many terrorist organizations. It puts a horrible strain on our troops to be engaged in a war where they do not know if the apple selling granny on the corner is going to strap on a bomb and blow them up. No matter what the training, in a group as large as our army, some people are going to snap and react badly to that kind of stress. (Abu Ghraib being a major recruiting point for the terrorists as well). Now, dismissing out of hand that this is standard procedure, because I DO thnk that we only have a few soldiers willing to do such things, whether ordered to or not, one has to admit that it only takes a few bad apples and a few screwups to FURTHER tarnish our image and discredit what we are ostensibly there to do in the eyes of the muslim community. Having our troops there is not helping the situation, fighting them "on their battlefield" is merely giving them more recruits. Meanwhile, our borders are porous as a loofah, our emergency services STILL arent universally using the same radio frequencies, and anti-terrorism experts are smuggling C4 charges onto airlines to prove a point. Our security starts at home, our military as organized, is not good at fighting the kind of war these people are waging, not while maintaining any sort of moral ground at least.

Joined: 10 Jul 2006Posts: 907Location: Studying somewhere. Or at least that's where I should be.

Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 7:58 pm Post subject:

I understand that point of view.

My question, to clear up what has apparently become a point of contention between myself and MT, is do you intend the US to remove all troops deployed throughout the world? The way you phrased it, I did not know if you were talking about bringing everybody from everywhere home or not. That would be a large step in an isolationist direction, in my opinion._________________-Agamemnon.....but you can call me Jake.

P: They don't know we know they know we know. And Joey, you can't say anything!

No, but stationing troops where they are obviously agitating the populace is just a good way to breed anti-american sentiment. Thats my point. Occupying Iraq, when the majority of the people, even those who arent outright hostile to us dont want us to be there is bad strategy.

Pull our people out of the middle east and afghanistan, use them to secure our borders and ports,

This statement can be seen as something of isolationist policy. Rather than meet the enemy on their battlefield, let's guard our own borders. I don't think that calling this isolationist is out of the question.

ummmmmm.......do you happen to remember what happened on september 11, 2001? their battlefield was within our borders. the thing that worries people the most is that they will be able to attack us again, in our own country. as they have since done in bali, madrid, london....and for that matter, iraq, since many of the terrorists now there are not iraqis.

see, terrorists don't _have_ a border. their whole thing is that they can attack anywhere, any time. it's not an army that you can see moving from a satellite, with rare exceptions (like bin laden in afghanistan) they don't have a country as their official base of operations - and even bin laden didn't stay to fight for afghanistan, he's apparently cleared out. that's the whole problem with terrorists - they are just a handful of guys on student visas, or citizens of your own country who have been pursuaded by the ideology. and you can't just attack them as if everyone surrounding them was supporting them - because you just alienate those people as well.

what i was trying to lay out (and which i note you have not commented on, even tho sojobo was kind enough to point out that i was laying out a general strategy, not simply attacking bush) was a way to 1) protect ourselves, which is what we mostly want to keep the terrorists from destroying and 2) come up with policies that will (at best) give people other options than terrorism or (at worst) not give them reasons to blame us. (and they _do_ have good reasons to blame us, which predate bush.)

see, this is the real problem with bush's statement. we are already fighting them here - them being here is what started the whole thing. and they can continue to be here, while we are busy stirring up trouble somewhere else._________________aka: neverscared!

Joined: 10 Jul 2006Posts: 907Location: Studying somewhere. Or at least that's where I should be.

Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:03 pm Post subject:

Except that we have been battling them elsewhere. I'd rather battle them elsewhere. I have no problem battling terrorists within countries that harbor them. It's why I completely supported Israel in their actions against Hezbollah._________________-Agamemnon.....but you can call me Jake.

P: They don't know we know they know we know. And Joey, you can't say anything!

Except that we have been battling them elsewhere. I'd rather battle them elsewhere. I have no problem battling terrorists within countries that harbor them. It's why I completely supported Israel in their actions against Hezbollah.

i double posted when i tried to edit, i kept the second one because it had what i wanted to say, and i've now edited _this_ one twice because it keeps cutting out my explanation._________________aka: neverscared!

Last edited by mouse on Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:04 pm; edited 3 times in total

you really need to read "the art of war". he starts with a neat analogy of a family of doctors - one performs dificult and heroic cures to advanced diseases, one cures diseases in their earliest stages - and the best of them heads the disease off before it gets started. right now, we are the one fighting a desperate action against a grave situation, and we aren't even finding the cure. we need to be the guy who stops the disease before it even starts. and that will require a whole rethinking of the way we deal with other countries.

blowing them up because we think there might be terrorists there is not going to do it.

(by the way - israel hasn't come out too well against hezbollah. in fact, last i heard, hezbollah was really profiting by the situation, because they have been johnny-on-the-spot, helping people who are homeless, etc., because of israeli retaliation. there's a lesson there - although not the one you might like to draw.)_________________aka: neverscared!

Except that we have been battling them elsewhere. I'd rather battle them elsewhere. I have no problem battling terrorists within countries that harbor them. It's why I completely supported Israel in their actions against Hezbollah.

I disagree. See, other countries are focusing their tactics on investigation work, and heading them off before they can do something. Those countries are actually getting somewhere. We read an awful lot in the news about how England, or denmark or this country or that country managed to stop a plot. Hell they're even managing to do so without gutting their civil rights. I dont see anything from america stopping these attempts. Less military might, more investigation work is how to prevent these things. Al Qaida is a patient and plotting enemy, just because they havent struck again doesnt mean they arent planning to, and between the 9/11 commission report, and several independent studies we're just as unprepared for it as we were in 01.

Except that we have been battling them elsewhere. I'd rather battle them elsewhere. I have no problem battling terrorists within countries that harbor them. It's why I completely supported Israel in their actions against Hezbollah.

But if you're a member of a peaceful family who wants nothing to do with terror, wars on terror, terrorists or the US, and all of a sudden your house is blown up and half your family is killed because your country allegedly harbors terrorists, I'd say the chances of you becoming a terrorist instead of a farmer, a dentist or a mailman would go up the roof...

Ag id like to make the point that just because we are indeed fighting them over there doesnt mean we're safer over here. The funny thing about terrorists is that they dont nessicarily hold themselves in between boarders. Terrorists aren't an organized group with a finite amount of manpower and resources. Any wackjob with a destructive imagination can become a terrorist, and they dont even need someone like osama supporting them to do it. Saying we arent leaving iraq until the terrorists are defeated is asinine. You'll never completely defeat them and not all the terrorists in the world are fighting in Iraq. The ones there just choose to be there because WE happen to be there at the moment. A lot of people with anti-american sympathies but without other means to act upon them, see Iraq as a convienent place to take the fight to the us. So far the only thing our presence has done is recruit for them and draw more into the fight. Its kind of rediculous to me to say you feel like your safer at night because weve got soldiers dodging shrapnel and bullets half a world away and havent really done anything intelligent or useful to secure ourselves at home.